Various types of shoring structures have been devised and used for supporting boat hulls for dry dock storage and maintenance. Because of the wide variety of hull shapes, keels and boat sizes, these structures have generally been custom constructed at the maintenance or storage site for particular boats using basic timber elements, tie rods, and jack stands. Examples of such custom constructed stands are found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,139,277 to Mears and U.S. Pat. No. 4,756,642 to Quinn, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,660 to Corbett. These types of constructions generally require that individual jack stands be place about the boat hull and individually adjusted, with the addition of some cross supports between jack stands.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,468,150 to Price and U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,633 to Robb illustrate attempts to provide cradle type supports which can accommodate boats of varying sizes by providing means for inwardly tilting jack stands mounted on a base structure. These types of cradles require tensioning tie rods or other types of supports with multiple adjustments and fastenings. In addition, cradle type boat stands rely on skewing the jack stands to accommodate hulls of varying widths and lengths. Skewed supports, however, are inherently less stable than vertical supports. It would therefore be desirable to have a boat stand which is easily assembled, uses the more stable vertical supports, and yet can accommodate a wide range of boat hull and keel sizes and the need for access at a variety of locations along the hull and keel.